Now listen, playing on an aircraft carrier, or in Maui, or the Bahamas or whatever else… I think it’s neat. It’s a unique experience, for players, coaches and fans, bringing high-level college hoops to places that don’t always get to see such wonders and introducing players to things they simply may not otherwise get to experience. Fans—many well-to-do, but many turning these one-off events into a family vacation—love them. Of all the things college athletics, and particularly college basketball, can get wrong—and Lord can the sins be legion—multi-team events are never something you’ll hear me bagging on. They’re too good of a time for everyone involved and too good of a product for the people they are designed to entertain.
Having said that, it’s incredibly stupid that the last time Kansas and North Carolina played each other on campus was 1960. A whole lot of high-caliber basketball players have passed through Lawrence and Chapel Hill for Wayne Hightower and Lee Shaffer to have been the marquee attractions last time either graced the other’s campus.
Monday, the Tar Heels and Jayhawks announced a home-and-home between the schools—a true home-and-home, at the Phog and the Dean Dome. When I saw the headline, I assumed this meant a Kansas home game at the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City and a North Caroline home game somewhere in either Greensboro or Charlotte. Unfortunately, that these games will take place on campus rather at a “home” site miles away from Lawrence or Chapel Hill is at least partially because Allen Fieldhouse (16,300) and the Dean Smith Center (21,750) are massive haunts comparable in size to those sites that would ostensibly sell more tickets (although Greensboro Coliseum, unbeknownst to me until just now, holds 35,000 people, somehow).